


Lab Rats

by mandalora



Series: Suture Up Your Future [3]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Bodyswap, Gen, and corvo and daud have to suffer the consequences, in which the outsider enjoys himself a little too much, or just suffer in general, that works too, this is completely standalone, this isn't suyf or part of it but it's the same exact setting because I love this setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:00:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25877062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandalora/pseuds/mandalora
Summary: After fifteen long years, the Outsider's two favorite toys are finally brought together on one ship. What could possibly go wrong?Body swap au: rats and mana potions edition
Relationships: Corvo Attano & Daud, Corvo Attano/Daud
Series: Suture Up Your Future [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1418038
Comments: 9
Kudos: 64





	Lab Rats

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lostsoul512](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostsoul512/gifts).



> Happy birthday, my dear, I hope this is the trash you were expecting <3

“I must say, I’m impressed,” said the Outsider, “by how well you and Daud are getting along.”

In a show of irritation, Corvo lowered his eyelids. If the god was so insistent on cutting into his sleep hours and pulling him into the Void at every available opportunity, then he could at least have the courtesy of making him wake up well-rested in the morning. “I don’t know how you gleaned that,” he droned. “You know it’s a strictly professional arrangement.”

“Oh, indeed.” The Outsider sat back on his favorite slab of suspended rock and narrowed his eyes to black slits. “However, you must be willing to admit that this arrangement is proceeding much more favorably than your... previous encounter.”

Interest gleamed in his eyes as he tilted his head to the side. Corvo loosed a tired sigh.

“Yes, well,” he said, “we aren’t exactly trying to put one another in the ground these days, you know?”

“Of course.” The Outsider mused on the words for a moment. Then, a crinkle creased the smooth alabaster of his cheek, right by the wing of his nose. “Dreadful, that was. I had such grand expectations for that meeting in the Flooded District. Such hopes. The outcome was... underwhelming.”

A bark of a scoff rose up in Corvo’s throat, but he subdued it and coughed out the indignation instead. _“Underwhelming,”_ he mocked, scowling and crossing his arms. He didn’t think he would ever truly get used to the god’s audacity, no matter how many years passed. “And what, pray tell, were you expecting?”

“Everything happened so fast,” the Outsider hummed. “In that poor excuse of a cell Daud had you thrown into, you had time to reflect, to consider the different threads that might bring you to a desired outcome—and instead you followed the most obvious course and simply rushed in, crossbow loaded and sword drawn. I was surprised you even bothered to collect your weapons on the way, I suppose I should give you credit for that.”

Corvo did not know whether to feel amused or insulted, so he just opted for calm neutrality of demeanor in hopes that the Outsider would hurry everything up and would soon let him go back to bed.

“Who would have thought that the first thing you would do upon meeting another one of my Marked would be to immediately come for his throat?”

“I let him live, didn’t I?”

“And then immediately left.”

Now Corvo indulged in his scoffing. “What would you have had us do, huh, sit down for some tea? Share a bottle of wine?”

“I care not for specifics, but whatever you would have found suitable to help carry a conversation would have proved appropriate.”

Right. Ultimately, all the Outsider cared about was a good conversation. It was almost charming. 

“Well, there’s plenty of time for it now.” Not that he and Daud would be making much use of it; playing along, however, tended to make the Outsider’s lectures go by a little faster. Usually. Sometimes. On occasion. “Am I free to go?”

“Plenty of time indeed,” the Outsider drawled, and something in his voice rubbed Corvo the wrong way. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. All he knew for sure was that, suddenly, he felt strangely uncomfortable under that black stare.

But, of course, that was nothing new. Who knew what the trickster thought in that head of his, it didn’t concern him much.

“And thus,” continued the Outsider, “we should make use of the opportunity. The first… field test, if I might call it that, with the two of you on assignment went wonderfully. Now, I think, I would like to conduct an experiment. Play a game, if you will.”

“Wait—” Corvo did not want to take this as anything more than yet another glob of cryptic nonsense, and yet a vague sense of unease pricked at his insides all the same. “A game. What game?”

“Oh, worry not, my dear Corvo, it is merely a game of observation.”

Corvo wasn’t awake enough to care to the full extent, so he decided to ignore his unease. There was no point in reading into the words, he told himself—and so he didn’t. 

Everything was a game from the high and faraway vantage point of the Void. That was nothing new.

He indeed had nothing to worry about.

*

Stirred by a dream he couldn’t remember but the remnants of which still prickled in his senses, Daud groaned himself into waking. Cool air at his chest and the uneven weight on his legs said that he partially threw off the blanket in his sleep—the dream made him toss and turn, whatever it was.

It was early, he felt it. He could catch another hour of shut-eye for sure. He yawned, rubbed his face—

Where he expected to find coarse morning stubble he found genuine hair.

There was no way he grew a beard overnight.

And yet his fingers raked through moderately coarse growth at his jaw.

_There was no way._

The cot creaked with utter misery as he shot up. Looked around. Took in and tried—and failed—to process the fact that he was in Corvo’s cabin and, consequently, in Corvo’s bed.

He didn’t drink last night. He didn’t drink a single drop—if anything, he’d gone to bed early. And yet, a headache pounded in his temples. He felt queasy. He did his best to swallow down the pressure in his throat, rubbed his face again in hopes of clearing his head up, and saw that his hands did not look like normal.

And neither did his forearms. Nor chest. Nor stomach. He was sporting a skin tone a bit darker than usual, scars different from usual. He didn’t recognize them. They were old. They were _many._

But that was just details. His whole damn torso was not like his own.

“What,” Daud muttered to no one, under his breath. “The,” he patted himself down cautiously on the sides, on the front, back, everywhere, not recognizing the feel of his own body. “Fuck.”

He even sounded weird. Not like himself. He brought his hand—not his hand, _a_ hand—to the neck, palming the skin gently and almost apprehensively, like a physician would a patient. “The,” he said, a bit louder this time, with purpose, feeling the vibrations of his throat. Testing the sound, listening to the cadence and timbre. “The. The. The fuck. What the fuck.”

He muttered a few more words at varying volume and pitch, cleared his throat, tested a fuller cough.

No. Not his voice. Corvo’s.

Corvo’s cabin. Corvo’s skin tone. Corvo’s Mark. Corvo’s... scars, he supposed. Corvo’s beard, naturally.

 _You bastard,_ Daud thought, _and here I was sure you’d left my dreams alone._

It was fitting, he supposed. If the man was going to waltz back into his life then he might as well invite himself into his head, too.

What a load of bullshit. He couldn’t wait to sleep it all off.

He lay back down, tugged up the blanket, and prepared for the second attempt at proper waking.

Roughly half an hour later, after a short dip into a shallow, poor excuse of sleep, Daud once again opened his eyes to Corvo’s cabin. He once again darted up, once again palmed all over himself only to find that same beard, those same scars, that entire body that wasn’t his.

He pinched himself. He damn well near slapped himself. He was wide awake, and yet there was no possible way this could be actually happening. 

Only after a couple minutes of dumb staring into nothing did he decide that it might be worth to take a look in a mirror.

There was one here, above the sink by the door. Daud gingerly, cautiously rose to the feet that weren’t his own and took a slow walk to the sink, keeping his eyes down as if afraid of what he might find were he to look up.

In a few moments, he looked.

Bracing his arms on the edges of the sink, staring at the reflection of brown eyes and hair, working his jaw aimlessly, the air escaped him in a long, slow hiss of a sigh.

Yep. 

Corvo.

“Corvo, what the fuck.”

Logically speaking, Corvo was most likely the last person that had anything to do with this—after all, he was the last person that wanted anything to do with Daud in the first place. This might be Delilah’s trickery, maybe strange side effects of having meddled with all the witchcraft at the Conservatory. Ashworth could have hexed him, for all he knew. Or maybe the Outsider had grown bored aga—

_“That sick fucking bastard!”_

Daud started when his own true voice roared out from somewhere on the ship. A slam of a door came next—the door of his cabin, he figured—and Daud dashed to the exit and out into the hallway, vainly, hopelessly wishing that he was not about to see what he already knew.

Regardless of his wishes, on the other side of the hallway, by his own cabin’s doorway, he saw himself. Wearing only a pair of pants like when he had when he went to bed, riled up and wide-eyed and—damn, they were really in it now.

Daud—the real Daud, the mind of Daud, the Corvo-bodied Daud—sucked on his teeth, frowned, and then said, “Corvo, get your ass out of my body.”

Corvo must have woken up only just now, looking like he still couldn’t tell up from down. Daud could only stare. Seeing his own face like that was strange to no end, it was certainly something he’d need to get used to—

No. No. They wouldn’t need to get used to anything. They’d set everything straight at once.

Corvo—though for the moment, at least, he’d have to get used to referring to his own physical self as such—gaped at him, blinked, then shook his head as if to try to shake off a hallucination, and then crossed the hallway to Daud’s side and shoved him back into the cabin, shutting the door behind them.

His first destination was the mirror.

“Corvo,” Daud grunted, crossing his arms and trailing his eyes after the man, “you wanna tell me what’s going on here?”

Corvo peered at the mirror, palming his new face with a tad of frantic aggression, then looked at the reflection of Daud before whipping around to study him head-on. As he looked him up and down, he sucked in a tense breath and rubbed his jaw.

Void, this looked so bizarre.

Corvo worked his jaw for a couple more seconds and said, “Fuck.”

“Yeah,” said Daud.

Corvo made a sound in the back of his throat, something between a prolonged groan and a hiss, and then once again rubbed his face. “That son of a bitch.”

“The Outsider?”

“Who else?” Corvo placed his hands on his hips, then looked in the mirror again. Daud looked too. This was ridiculous. There was virtually no way to tell who was truly who at first glance. “He pulled me into the Void again last night. Said something about a game. Tsk. Should have known he was up to something.”

“A game.” Daud snorted. “He literally said something about a _game_ and you fucking ignored it?”

“Oh, like that’s different from his every other speech.”

“You don’t just brush off things like that, you jackass—”

Corvo faced him with a sharp turn and an offended set of his brow. “Okay, Void expert, what would you have had me do? Huh? Argue? Demand an elaboration?” When Daud said nothing and only pursed his lips, he poked a finger into his chest. “You don’t get to blame me for this.”

“Fine.” Daud rubbed his eyes. “What now?”

“Now,” Corvo stepped back up to the sink and splashed some water on his face, “I go back to sleep and wake up from this shit show.”

He brushed past Daud and walked towards the cot.

Daud sighed. “Already tried that. Doesn’t work.”

“Well, you’re not me. In any case, I can’t deal with this right now.” Corvo plopped himself down and spread out the blanket.

When Daud didn’t move from his spot, he stared up at the other. “You can go now.”

“You’re seriously just gonna sleep?”

“Yes.”

Well, there wasn’t much Daud could do in terms of dissuasion.

He only stood back and took in the image of... himself sitting on Corvo’s bed.

Billie would never let him hear the end of it.

“Uh,” he raised an eyebrow, “so are we just gonna let the others in on this, or...”

“How do you mean?”

“This is your room.”

“Precisely. Now get out.”

“But you look like me. As far as anyone is concerned, you’re me. So, technically, you should go back to mine.”

Corvo just looked at him a moment and, if not for the circumstances, his glare alone could have made Daud feel like the greatest piece of shit this far south in the Empire.

Watching his very own face address this expression to him was—well, it sure was something.

Finally, Corvo hissed out a sigh and muttered out another string of profanities.

Then he rose, brushed past Daud without a word, and shut the door on the way out.

*

Daud did not know where to put himself.

About an hour after his and Corvo’s convening, nothing changed. Not that he’d expected it to. Not that he could do anything about it. He’d snatched one of Corvo’s shirts, pulled on Corvo’s boots, and had been sitting at the table in the briefing room for the better part of the hour in sheer effort of getting used to the feel of his body.

The results weren’t encouraging. Plain and simple—he did not feel like himself, and his physical form would not let up on reminding him of it. With its strange tingling, with its general otherness. He felt... smaller. Not by much, not at all, but every subtle change felt exaggerated. His eyesight was slightly worse. His hearing, on the other hand, seemed slightly sharper, but that still felt strange and unwanted. The body just did not fit—but at least Corvo’s clothes did.

When Billie showed up and wished an offhanded good morning, and Daud parroted her greeting back to her, he grew increasingly conscious of the way he was sitting. Was this how Corvo would sit? Did he sit in a particular way? Did it matter?

Did he need to pretend to be Corvo, now? What was the point in pretending, anyway? What was the harm in telling Billie what had happened?

Perhaps there was no harm in it, but there was no point, either. She wouldn’t believe it. Even if she did, she wouldn’t be able to do anything. Sokolov could believe him, on the off chance, but he’d start thinking up hypotheses rather than solutions. No use in making a sensation out of this—Corvo would wake up and they would quickly and quietly bring everything back to normal and no one would know.

“You’re early today,” Billie called from the galley. “Daud isn’t up yet?”

Daud opened his mouth. Closed it.

“Uh, n— Don’t think so...”

“You got something to eat?”

He’d never once even thought about food. 

“No,” he rasped.

Billie pressed, “you want anything?”

“No,” he said again, and then cleared his throat and mumbled, “I’m good, thanks.”

“Oh?” Now Billie turned her head to look at him. “Alright…”

With the gnawing discomfort growing by the second, Daud shifted in his seat and scratched his jaw—for the umpteenth time. The beard still felt so alien; it’d been months since he’d had one of his own and to go from nothing to this length in one night was incredibly jarring.

“I’m gonna,” he muttered unsurely after a minute, and then rose to his feet, “go, uh. Get some air.”

Billie looked at him again, and Daud wondered if what he said sounded somehow strange. “Okay.”

He nodded and quickly left the room, towards the stairs.

On deck, he tried to transverse.

That came easily enough, but was still unnatural. Corvo’s Mark was the same as his and yet felt slightly different. Reluctant, even, like it knew it wasn’t being used by its rightful owner. Corvo’s transversals required him to flex his hand slightly differently from how he normally did, and he found that, over the years, he hadn’t even realized that he’d been doing it a certain way.

The other powers were harder.

Much harder. The Mark was fighting him in earnest, steaming and pricking his hand painlessly with a hundred of offended little needles. He had to really strain his mind and focus to try and get ahold of the elusive bits of the Void that tried their damndest to slip through his fingers.

He took an embarrassing amount of time to finally grasp the right string from this tangled clew of the Void and slow down time. It took a few more tries to stop it entirely—but the feat got exponentially easier after the first successful attempt.

The similarities between their capabilities ended there, however. As Daud understood it, Corvo’s second sight worked somehow differently from his, despite the similar function. That, he felt, he could figure out with some effort. Everything else, at the moment at least, seemed positively inaccessible. He could feel no tangible mental block of any kind, but he acutely felt how his Void potential was... flimsy. Scattered. Like he was trying to catch flies but grasped only air.

This was, frankly, worrying.

He did not know how long this prank of the Outsider’s was meant to last, and when it would end. Or when the Outsider would finally grow bored with it and leave them alone. Or when they would break the spell themselves—if it was even possible.

The prospect of the contrary prickled goosebumps at the back of his neck.

One thing was sure—the timing was horrendously inconvenient. They’d already spent a few days off after the Conservatory, staying on the _Wale._ Waiting any longer was in nobody’s plans, they’d planned to set out for Stilton soon. If they couldn’t shake this spell before then...

If the black-eyed bastard wanted them to have no choice but to go into the field like this, to see how they’d fare in one another’s skin...

“You little bitch,” Daud growled in Corvo’s voice, which was fitting, he supposed, since he was sure that they both ardently shared the sentiment.

Someday, he’d finally wring the bastard’s neck.

*

“Daud! Good morning. Could you—” Sokolov shook the newspaper in his hands so that the paper stayed upright instead of folding in on itself, then turned to look over the top of his half-moon glasses. “Hoh. Someone’s looking grim.”

Corvo liked to think he could easily fix his face into a favorable expression if he so wished, only, the fact of having woken up as Daud for the second time today was draining all his strength to do so.

Sokolov, in the meantime, licked the tip of his thumb and flipped the page of his newspaper. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” Corvo gritted through clenched teeth in a tone indicating the complete reverse. “Everything is perfectly fine.”

“You’re certain? Are you feeling alright?”

“I am feeling fantastic.”

“Well,” Sokolov’s eyebrow flicked up for a moment before he turned back to his daily share of current events. “If you say so.”

Right. Yes. Perhaps if he pretended hard enough, he would indeed feel better.

Corvo cleared his throat in yet another vain attempt to bring his regular voice back. The deep hoarseness of Daud’s, earned with obvious decades of smoking, sounded even more jarring and noticeable when coming out of his own larynx. And perhaps he wouldn’t have even minded it much, had the circumstances been less dire and strange. “Did you, uh, did you want something?”

“Ah, yes, I was going to ask if you could pour me some more coffee... I’m sitting so comfortably here and would really rather not get up.”

Sokolov needed no excuse in wanting to move as little as possible, really. Ever since his return from Jindosh’s den, the whole crew was happy to help out and run little errands for him here and there. 

“Sure thing,” Corvo muttered and came up to take the empty mug out of the other’s hand.

The coffee pot in the galley had gone cold, so he was stuck there for a few minutes while it was heating up on the stove. That was when Billie sought him out.

“You really slept in today, huh,” she noted. “Bad night? Didn’t sleep well?”

 _Well, how should I put this?_ Corvo would love to grouse but instead grit his teeth at the coffee pot that was taking an indecent amount of time to heat up. “Uh, yeah. Sure.”

Billie, busy with organizing some recent purchases on the storage shelves, grunted out a sound of cursory sympathy.

“There’s still leftover breakfast,” she said after a minute.

“I’m good.”

Who knew how food would fare with this change in his biology. Better not risk it.

Billie gave a curt hum. “Yeah? You sure?”

In fact, he was fairly hungry, but he could ignore it if he had to. “I’m sure. Thanks.”

“...Well, alright.”

They spent the next few moments in silence as the pot finally gave in to the forces of gas, and Corvo filled Sokolov’s mug with the steaming, aromatic drink.

“Where’s D—” He caught himself and loosed a breathy groan in the back of his throat, then closed his eyes for a second, and tried again. “Where’s Corvo?”

Fantastic. Perhaps, by the end of it all, he’d end up in a nuthouse from having to refer to himself in third person the whole time.

Billie finished up with her tasks and brushed off her hands of dust. “Last I saw him, he was going up to the deck...”

Great. He’d go pay him a visit and they’d deal with all this in no time. Probably. Hopefully. “Good.”

He made a move towards the exit when Billie made him halt with a hand on his arm.

She then braced her hands on her hips and shot him a skeptical eye. “Everything okay?”

Corvo frowned at her—or deepened his already long-present frown, more like. “Yeah. Why?”

If he looked carefully enough, he could catch genuine concern in her gaze.

Did Daud’s wishes to speak with Corvo for any reason garner such concern every time? Why would they?

Slightly, more unintentionally than not, Corvo quirked an eyebrow. Billie rolled a shoulder, but also very subtly narrowed her eye. “You tell me. You’re kinda... moody. Corvo was too, now that I think about it—you sure everything’s alright between you two?”

Corvo had to consciously hold his face back from its natural expression of bemusement. Billie was awfully quick to jump to the conclusion; did she have reason to think something could be wrong? Why would there be, aside from the obvious?

“Yeah,” Corvo said in his best attempt at casual assurance that everything was indeed alright. Unfortunately, he didn’t think he was fooling anybody, especially not himself. “And I just didn’t sleep well, is all. Everything’s fine.”

The suspicion did not leave Billie’s gaze, so Corvo decided to leave the room instead. He tightened his lips briefly in a rushed and—most likely very poor—impression of a smile for lack of anything intelligent to say, then went out to hand off the mug of coffee to Sokolov, and hurried to flee up to the deck. 

He found... himself... squatting in a corner on the bridge wing, facing the railing, deep in concentration and doing something with his hands.

“There you are,” Corvo said, but was at once shushed into silence. Daud waved him off with his right hand so curtly it was almost rude, and continued staring intently at the floor in front of himself.

Humoring him in whatever he was doing, Corvo stood back, folded his arms, and leaned on the railing to wait.

A couple of silent minutes later, Daud managed to muster up a thin whirl of smoke and Void-dust on the ground, and Corvo finally understood his intent.

The whirl was clearly a bit of a struggle to maintain. It threatened to thin out a couple of times, but soon it spun into a solid little vortex and then, at last, spat out a single, small brown rat from its center.

“That’s...” Corvo followed the rat with his eyes as it gave a confused squeak and then skittered away, “underwhelming.”

Daud also watched as the rodent disappeared through a crack in the outer wall of the bridge cabin. “This is hard, give me some credit.”

“Congratulations,” Corvo scoffed, “you summoned your first rat. Now for a dozen more.”

Daud groaned out a sigh and rose to his feet. “This better be fucking temporary.”

A snort. “What, you don’t appreciate wearing my skin?”

“Like you appreciate wearing mine.”

“I most certainly do not. My face feels naked.”

At that, Daud turned to face him more fully and even allowed himself half a grin. “It’s a good look on you, you know.” He then hummed in a show of contemplation and scratched the beard at the side of his jaw. “Should try it myself, might put a razor to it…”

Corvo’s hiss was quick to interrupt: “Don’t you _fucking_ dare.”

Daud just laughed.

*

The deck had become arena and obstacle course both. They’d tried to talk everything over at first, tried to come up with a solution, but nothing had come to mind. Nothing but a gnawing, bitter notion that they were most likely just stuck in this blight for as long as the Outsider wished.

So instead of giving in to the hollow, mutual dread, they’d decided to do what they both knew. Take at least some measure of control into their hands.

They’d spent time on grasping each other’s abilities and practicing to employ them on the fly; at least the accessible ones, ones that didn’t deal with conjuring actual living beings out of nothing. That particular thread was awfully thin—Daud had not even attempted to summon more rodents since, but at least he could now easily look through Corvo’s version of the Void and fling powerful gusts of directional wind.

 _Careful with that,_ Corvo had said, more cheerful than gloomy after a successful test with a blast that had slammed him several meters away, making him narrowly miss a fall. _You can smash in wooden doors with this. Now imagine what it can do to smaller and lighter objects that aren’t bolted to the floor._

One thing that was interesting about some of Corvo’s powers, Daud had found, was how inherently chaotic they were. How they required heaps of effort and control to be wielded with desired precision.

Corvo, in the meantime, had pretty quickly grasped the foreign transversals and time bends, got used to Daud’s Void sight and had been enjoying himself a little too much with Daud’s power of tethering by virtually turning himself into a magnet when it came to small loose objects in the vicinity.

Apparently, hours went by and they didn’t even notice, of which Billie graciously informed them when she showed up on deck.

 _It’s half past three,_ she griped, _and neither of you even ate yet. The fuck are you doing anyway?_

So, now they were stuck at the table in the main room, and the rush of fresh adrenaline from having flitted about on deck like madmen quickly simmered down into sour irritation. It took a couple minutes of hesitant mutual staring at the food for the hunger to take its toll.

At last, they dug in, and—nothing happened. So far so good.

On the other hand, that was yet another sign that they could potentially, technically… live like this. And that would not do at all.

“Here’s a thought,” Daud said quietly when neither Sokolov nor Billie were in the room, “the Outsider’s bored, right? He wants something interesting to watch. Well what if we don’t do anything? Just go about business as usual.”

“And hope for him to get bored with this too and switch it back?”

“Sounds kinda stupid, I know.”

“Well,” Corvo scratched his jaw, “maybe? But we have no way of knowing if he’s even planning to switch it back. We have to try to do _something.”_

They sat in silence for a bit, drumming fingers on the table and balancing on the back legs of chairs, and then suddenly Corvo said, “Wait,” sprung up, and jogged out into the hallway.

He returned about ten minutes later, when Daud was thinking about going after him.

In his hands was a small brown rat.

“Is that my rat?” Daud deadpanned as the man sat back down across from him.

Corvo turned his hands slightly to fix the rodent in place and keep it from scrambling away. “Yep.”

“You’ve really just been chasing a rat all over deck for the past ten minutes?”

“That was the easy part, it took a long time to find it. Anyway, that doesn’t matter.”

“That’s hilarious.”

“Not at all. _Anyway—”_ Careful to avoid its claws, Corvo finally found a more or less comfortable position for the rat in his hands and was calming it by gently brushing his thumb over the back of its little head. Considering the fact that, for all intents and purposes, it was Daud who was currently coddling a rat, the sight was... interesting, to say the least. “You,” Corvo said, “are going to try and possess it.”

Daud blinked. “Uh.”

“Trust me.”

“I... kind of don’t.”

“Okay, look.” Corvo set the rat down on the table and fenced it off with his hands. “We’re stuck in each other’s bodies, right? So, essentially, we’re merged with each other. Your spirit’s in my body, my spirit’s in yours—the bodies themselves haven’t changed.”

“I guess.”

“So, technically, if you were to possess me, you’d be back in your own body and would be able to kick me out of it. Right?”

“Uhh.”

“I think that’s viable. Worth a try, at least.”

Daud supposed that made sense. Somewhat. In theory.

In practice, however...

“Um. So, uh, how do I do that exactly?”

Corvo nodded at the rat. “That’s what this little guy is for. Practice. Start small.”

Daud scoffed. “Well thanks for that, at least.”

“Listen. Possession is hardest out of everything I can do—well, I mean, normally. It was a bitch to figure out in the beginning and it’s the most taxing even now.”

“Mm! That’s very encouraging.”

 _“Listen._ I think you can manage it. Your— my body has all the knowledge, you just need to access it. It should be like muscle memory.”

Daud flexed and wiggled the fingers of his left hand, studying the Mark. “I’m not sure that’s how it works.”

“Well, you already summoned a rat, didn’t you?”

“Just one. Through arbitrary experimentation.”

“Well, there—I’m sure you could summon more rats if you tried, and I’m sure you can do this, as well.”

Daud looked at the rat snuggled between Corvo’s palms. Then glanced up at Corvo, and back again. “Shouldn’t it be easier to merge with people than small animals? If I’m understanding this right, I’m trying to cram the entirety of myself into a space the size of a walnut.”

“Well...” Corvo shrugged, slow and unsure. “I guess? Technically speaking? Only I’d say the Void is the opposite of technical.”

“Fair enough.”

“So, instead, I think this deals more with... consciousness and intellect, rather than physicality. It’s much easier to overpower and invade the mind of a rodent than of a grown man.” 

_“Overpower?”_ Daud gaped. “You gonna be resisting on me?”

“Well—no.” Corvo cleared his throat. “Or at least I’ll try not to. I don’t know how this works in these circumstances, I’ve never had to… be a host before.”

“Well, then, let’s try it.”

Corvo pursed his lips in something of a sarcastic half-smile. “Try the rat first.”

Daud scoffed out a small laugh. “You’re nervous.”

“Uh, no.”

“Oh, you are.”

Corvo clicked his tongue. “Like you wouldn’t be. It’s not like I like the idea.”

“So this is the Outsider’s new favorite pastime. Making you uncomfortable.”

“Shut up and get in the rat, Daud.”

Daud nodded, his expression exaggeratedly grave. “That’s very detailed instruction, thank you.” 

“Listen here, you little shit.” Corvo may as well been talking to the vermin, since he picked it up by its tail and practically dangled it in front of Daud’s face. “You’re gonna focus. You’re gonna hone in on the rat. And—”

The rat squeaked and tried to no avail to scramble out of Corvo’s hold, pawing at empty air. Daud furled an eyebrow. “What’d the little guy do? Put him down.”

“He’s gonna die anyway.”

“Well, that’s grim.”

“Yeah, well, that’s the harsh reality.”

The prospect of being stuck inside the rat’s head, snuggled right up next to its dying mind, wasn’t very inspiring. Partly to distract himself from this mental image, Daud prodded: “So, uh, does that mean _you’re_ gonna die when I invade your mind?”

Corvo scowled in what looked like genuine confusion. “No. That’s ridiculous.”

“Yeah, I suppose…” Still, Daud couldn’t help a grin. “If everything goes right, that is.”

“Daud, I’m not a fucking rat. I’ll be fine.”

“Hm. Hopefully.”

Before Corvo could bite something back, Daud gestured to the rat. “Put him down. Let’s try it.”

“Finally.” Corvo did just that and held the rodent gently in place. “Okay. Once again: calm your thoughts, focus all your attention on the rat and... try to... feel it, I guess.”

Daud sat back and hissed out a slow sigh, eyes fixed on the rat’s little black bead ones. “What should it feel like? What am I looking for?”

“It...” Corvo picked the rat up into his right hand so he could make little motions with his left, to help him think. “It should be like... you should feel it in the Mark, but also in your head. There should be this slight pull. And you wanna follow that pull. Let it lead you.”

That all sounded well and good, simple enough, only Daud would have preferred to be able to feel that pull in the first place. 

“Okay,” he drawled. “Where does this pull come from?”

Corvo clicked his tongue slightly as he tried to think. “It… uh… try to… reach out with the Mark— but not directly with the Mark, as in, also with your mind? You know what I mean?”

Daud frowned. “Not really.”

“Look, I’ve never had to try explaining this before.” He sighed and rubbed his jaw with his free hand. “Okay. How about…” 

It was in this moment when Billie entered the room.

“What the fuck,” she said and Corvo jumped at the abrupt interruption, but managed to hold on to the rat, “are you guys doing?”

Daud choked on a chortle. “Uh—”

“Daud, why are you holding a rat?”

He wanted to object and say that he was in fact _not_ holding a rat, but then remembered that this was exactly what Billie was seeing with her own good eye. 

Corvo, evidently, finally realized that he was the one who needed to respond. “I, uh—”

“First of all, get it off my table right this instant. Second of all, I get that the plague ended years ago and all, but that doesn’t mean that touching rats with bare hands is suddenly a good idea. Third of all—”

Daud had to pretend to rub his jaw to smother building laughter with his hand as Corvo lifted the rat up into the air.

Corvo groused, “You think I want to be touching rats?”

“Well, I don’t know, you’re still doing it! Actually, no, keep holding it, I don’t need it running around my ship—”

“It’s fine,” Daud decided to step in and help out, “don’t worry, the rat’s clean. We need it for a moment. C— Daud’s just helping me out.”

Both Billie and Corvo snapped their heads to him—with demand for explanation and suspicion, respectively.

“I’m… practicing, a little. My, uh…” he flexed his left hand a few times for show. “The Mark’s been acting up. But it’s alright. I’ll get it up and running in no time.”

Slowly, eyes dangerously glinting, Corvo squinted.

Billie frowned. “Wait. What happened?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing, just… having some trouble. But don’t worry about it.”

Corvo cleared his throat and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Whoosh, Corvo,” Billie crossed her arms. “Not worry about it? You guys were gonna head out into the city tomorrow, what happened?”

Before Daud could try to reassure her again, Corvo butted in. “He’s fine,” he gritted out. “He’s doing very well, actually.”

“Are you trying to possess the rat, is that what this is? Can you not do it? What about your other powers? Do you need an Addermire or something?”

_“He is fine and his Mark is fine.”_

“Well then let’s see it.”

Corvo hissed out a barely audible _shit._

Daud found that focusing on the rat and trying to reach its psyche was a task made even more difficult with the addition of Billie breathing down his neck.

After a couple minutes of tense, anticipation-filled nothing, Billie sucked in a breath through her teeth. “Uh... yeah,” she said, “I’m gonna go get you an Addermire.”

When she left, Corvo lowered the rat back down to the table and turned to Daud. “I’m going to kill you.”

Daud tilted his head back and slowly, smugly, theatrically raked his fingers through Corvo’s beard on his jaw. “Nah, I don’t think so.”

Corvo hissed out a long breath, and shook his head in irritated astonishment. “Motherfucker.”

*

Billie came back with the full set of both the cure and the doctor—not that the doctor could do much to ease this particular ailment. She plopped the two vials of Addermire in front of Daud and stood back, arms crossed.

“Corvo,” Sokolov said, lowering himself into a free chair with a creaking sigh, “Meagan tells me you’re having difficulties with your magic.”

With the rat held safe and secure close to his body in one of his hands, Corvo rubbed his eyes and temples with the other.

Sensing the fumes of his embarrassment all the way from his seat, Daud sheepishly clicked his tongue. “It’s... well...”

“That’s not good.”

Corvo croaked out a laugh. “You don’t say?”

“Drink the Addermires,” Billie reminded. “Maybe it’ll help.”

The taste of Addermire Solution was far from Daud’s favorite on his palate, and he wasn’t exactly looking forward to throwing back both vials at once. 

“I doubt it,” Corvo muttered.

Billie snapped her head over to him. “Why not?” Then quickly turned back to Daud for a second—“Drink.”

Daud sighed, and drank.

“Why not?” Billie asked Corvo again, eye narrowed. “Why do you say that?”

“Yes, I don’t see why it can’t work,” said Sokolov, eyeing Daud as he sipped from the first vial. “Whatever this is, those bloodfly toxins in there are sure to freshen your synapses right up.”

Daud twisted his lips in between swallows. “Delicious.”

Corvo muttered under his breath, “If only it were as simple as... synapses.”

“Come again?” Sokolov perked up. “I admit I can’t tell you for sure what makes your magic tick, no one can, but the complex workings of the brain are the only thing that viably brings this phenomenon into reality out of the realm of complete absurdity.”

At this point, Daud was genuinely starting to hope for this to work.

“What are you implying?” Billie asked. “Can the Outsider’s favors give you mutations in the brain?”

“Possibly. I’ve not had the chance to perform autopsy on a brain of a Void-touched, but I wouldn’t be surprised—”

“Okay,” Daud slammed the empty vial on the table and croaked before the conversation could spiral further into clinical unsavoriness. “One should be enough for now.”

Billie eyed him with suspicion. “You think?”

With his throat raw and the bitter taste still strong in his mouth cavity, Daud glared at her. _“Yes.”_

He’d be lying, though, if he said he didn’t start feeling a pleasant tingling in his fingertips as fresh currents of more or less stabilized magic wove into his being.

“Alright,” he breathed, tugging up his sleeves, then interlocked his fingers and stretched his hands. “Let’s try this again.”

Corvo said nothing and merely looked at him with stern, tight-lipped concentration, a sort of mix of pessimistic doubt and a sense of _this better fucking work._

He brought the rat forward. 

Immediately, as soon as Daud laid his eyes on it he felt something akin to a connection—a thin, frail thread that it was.

He squinted as if it would help to see better with his mind’s eye, grabbed hold of that thread, and—gently, hesitantly, so as not to tear—pulled.

The rat jerked and let out a prolonged, shrill squeak.

Corvo winced.

“Easy,” he hissed, holding the rodent in place as it tried to scramble away, and Daud felt a jolt of sympathy for Corvo and his upcoming turn to play lab rat. If they ever got to that point. “Don’t prod so much.”

“I wasn’t trying to prod, I was pulling—”

“No, you’re the one that needs to be pulled in—”

“Daud,” Billie butted in, “I think Corvo knows what he’s doing.”

Daud couldn’t help a nervous bark of a laugh.

Corvo, in turn, gritted his teeth. “I’m not so sure.”

“O-okay.” Billie placed her fists on her hips. “Everybody stop for a second. I need to know what in the Void is going on here.”

Daud tensed. Flicked his eyes to Corvo and back. “Nothing—”

“No, you both’ve been acting strange all morning, then you horsed around on deck for fuck knows how long, and now this. Both of you clearly know something we don’t, so I need someone to start talking.”

Corvo, likely having forgotten about the rat in his care, lifted both his hands to rub his face, and Daud had to catch the biter before it could slip off the table.

Sokolov leaned back in his chair and looked up at Billie. “They’ve been acting strangely?”

“They even skipped breakfast.”

“Huh. That _is_ odd. Gentlemen—”

“We’re fine,” face still in his hands, Corvo creaked, weak and monotone, as if he was trying to vainly assure himself of this.

To refrain from somehow exacerbating the situation, Daud took to idly scratching the rat between its ears with his thumb.

Billie scoffed. “I beg to differ.”

Corvo breathed an exhausted groan. “We’re fine. We’re perfectly fine.”

“Evidently not—”

_“We’re fucking stuck in each other’s bodies.”_

Billie stared. “What?”

Corvo froze, hands at his temples, staring at the table in clear regret of having said anything. Daud, for lack of anything valid to contribute, continued petting the rat.

*

Convincing a realist of the Academy and a cynical skeptic that they were telling the truth and that the both of them were in the right state of mind proved a bit of challenge.

Somehow, though, through extensive explanations (which were generously named, considering the lack of any factual information), lavishly cursing the Outsider, and “identity-determining tests” of the sort that made the subject dredge up old facts and memories accessible only to him, they managed it.

Corvo was thankful for the fact that he no longer had to worry about misspeaking, and in general felt like a weight had been lifted off his chest, only, beyond that, Billie and Sokolov did not do much to mend the situation.

“I cannot _fucking_ believe this,” Billie was saying for about the fifth time in the past ten minutes. “Why didn’t you tell me? Now I feel like a complete fool.”

Sokolov, also, wasn’t exactly helping. Sometime in the fray he fished out his reading glasses, a journal, and a pen, and had been steadfastly writing. On occasion he paused, looked up and appeared listening to the conversation, though Corvo quickly caught how he intently kept his eyes on him or Daud, a tad unnerving in their sharpness.

“...So that’s what we’ve been doing,” Corvo was finishing up their most recent chunk of oration about their attempts to get Daud to grasp the skill of possession.

“Sounds like it’s just a matter of practice, trial and error,” Sokolov muttered, a bit absentminded, eyes following the swift movements of his pen across the page. “Eventually, your plan might work.”

It was genuinely heartening, even despite the fact that Sokolov had nothing to do with the magic of the Void, to hear an influential figure of the sciences granting some amount of validity to this thought process.

“In the same manner, I imagine you’d be getting more and more accustomed to inhabiting a foreign body with time,” the man continued. “Perhaps you might consider holding off on your attempts at reversal?”

Daud gave a few incredulous blinks. Corvo frowned. “Huh?”

“I don’t mean to sound forward, but,” Sokolov stopped writing and narrowed his eyes slightly at his journal, pushing up his glasses as he read, “Daud— ah, I mean, Corvo, you were terribly gloomy this morning, could you tell me what you were experiencing then? I’m hoping for specifics. Where are you currently experiencing symptoms, and in what capacity? Have they changed in any way since this morning?”

“Anton,” Billie called in a disapproving tone, “this is probably not the right time.”

“If they’re getting better at wearing each other’s skin, they may as well try and learn the full potential of doing so. Daud, I’d like you to think about your own responses; I need to compare.”

Daud replied drily, “No, I don’t think I will.”

“With both of your personal skill and one another’s capabilities, we could extrapolate when everything could return to sensory normalcy for you both.”

“I extrapolated already,” Daud grated, “that normalcy will come as soon as humanly possible.”

“You’re wasting a beautiful opportunity.”

“Uh, yeah, _your_ opportunity.”

“Anton,” Corvo rubbed his eyes. “We just want this to fucking end, okay? Let’s just move forward with the rat and, if you like, you can take your notes on that.”

At this point, Corvo thought, stalling could only worsen his anxiousness. The quicker they were over and done with the whole possession business, the better. If it ended up working—perfect. If not—well, at least they would have tried, and wouldn’t need to do it again.

And then Sokolov would have all his data and then some.

Sokolov clicked his tongue a few times, tapped with the back end of his pen on the page. “Fine. Go on, then.”

So they did.

It took two more tries, hazy attempts at direction from Corvo, rising frustration from all parties, and an increasingly exhausted and aggrieved rat—though every try was slightly better than the last, for sure—for Daud to snap.

“Fuck’s sake, the son of a bitch is pushing back like a fucking ox, let’s just—”

 _“No,”_ Corvo growled, “you are _not_ getting into my head until I see you do it successfully at least once—”

“Do you want us to leave?” Sokolov suddenly offered. “We might be creating an air of unnecessary pressure.”

Daud bit out, “Yes, actually, that would really fucking help.”

Billie scowled and even clicked her tongue, like she didn’t want to miss out on every possible second of her former employer and mentor sucking himself corporeally into a rat, but refrained from commenting.

When they left the room, Daud rubbed his face, huffed out a sharp breath, then said, “Hold him fucking still,” and took the remaining swig of Addermire.

Practically praying—counterproductively, evidently—to the Outsider at this point, Corvo held the rat still, and then, suddenly, there was no more Daud.

The rat in his grasp stopped thrashing and simply sat for a moment, startled and frozen.

Breath bated, Corvo slowly, hesitantly opened his hands. The rat moved its head around as if trying to take note of surroundings, then turned to face Corvo head on, looked up at him, and gave a thin, curious squeak.

All air left Corvo’s lungs in a reassured huff of laughter.

“You son of a bitch,” he muttered, breathy and grinning, as Daud sniffed at his—his own, technically—hands. “Son of a bitch, you did it.”

Daud sat back on his hind legs, pawed at the air, then scratched behind his ear in sharp yet clumsy motions.

“Guys!” Corvo called, and, with a cackle, couldn’t help slipping a knuckle under Daud’s chin to rub it over the fur. Daud immediately loosed an annoyed squeak, swatted at his finger, and shuffled away.

When Billie burst into the room with Sokolov in tow and cried _Outsider’s eyes!_ he evidently decided to test his capabilities for speed. Billie was defter than a rat, however, and before long he was swiped up from the table and left having to jerk his legs in the air, trying to scramble for purchase.

At last, she took pity on him and cupped him in both her hands so that he could sit comfortably, and in return he drew out a low squeak.

“This,” Billie said as she brought him to her eye level and he began nibbling petulantly on the side of her black-shard palm, “is amazing.”

“How long until the spell wears off?” Sokolov asked.

“Not long,” Corvo said, still giddy with the thrill of rising chance of success. “A few seconds. I didn’t tell him how to end it when he wants, but he’ll get out of it naturally.”

“Seems like he has good control of it,” said Billie.

As if on cue Daud scratched his ear with a hind leg. Corvo scoffed. “That might be debatable.” When a shudder rippled through the rat’s small body, he said, “Uh, you might want to set him down on the floor, or he’ll pop up right on top of you.”

Billie swore and hurried to do just that, and took a couple of steps back. Daud shuddered again, stronger this time, and in the next moment, in the split-second instant, the air above the rat practically split open and the invisible hole spat out a full human figure.

As Corvo marveled at how strange the transformation looked, seeing as he’d never had a chance to watch himself do this before, Daud staggered and coughed, but quickly regained his balance and took a few gulps of air. 

“Well,” he breathed. “Wasn’t that humiliating.”

Billie scoffed. “That was incredible, and you should do it again.”

Daud tossed her a half-hearted glare. 

Corvo beamed. “You _did_ it.”

“I did, huh.”

“Told you the Addermires would help,” Billie grinned in turn.

“If I ever have to chug even one more vial—”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll need plenty when you move up to the main course,” Sokolov chuckled, nodding at Corvo.

Daud huffed out a spent breath. “Fuck.”

“It’s a shame about the little guy,” Billie nodded at the floor, where the rat now lay dead. “Vermin don’t survive this at all? Ever?”

Corvo clicked his tongue sympathetically and shook his head. “Too big of a mind strain. They just can’t handle it.”

“Even at small lengths of time?”

“No. I don’t think time matters, I imagine it’s the very fact of a foreign presence that does it. Crushing the control out of you, crowding you out.”

Saying this aloud, he found, did not at all make him look forward to the finale of all these theatrics.

“I’d like to keep that, if none of you mind,” Sokolov said. “Take a look at it later.”

Daud replied, “Have at it.”

“So?” Corvo leaned forward and drummed his fingers on the table. “Thoughts?”

“It was interesting, for sure,” Daud said. “The biter was trying to fight me at first, but… couldn’t. I don’t know if I could say I had _complete_ control, but it was damn well near. Basically,” he rubbed his jaw, “it distinctly felt like a genuinely foreign body. Kinda similar to how it feels now, actually. I mean—more so, of course, but the idea is the same.”

“Uh-huh.” Corvo nodded. “And did you think you could get back out at any point you wished, or—?”

“To be honest, not really. Which is why I said I didn’t have absolute full control. But,” he emphasized a pause with an aimless jab of his finger, “I had the idea of what I’d need to do for that. So, what I’m thinking is… since it felt like the body was trying to force me out because it didn’t belong to me, I think I’ll have more control in my own.”

That sounded encouraging, pretty much what Corvo had wanted to hear. “Perfect. Then the next step is a go.”

“I suppose.”

“It should be much easier to manage, now that you get the idea.”

“Hm.”

For a long moment, they just stared at each other.

The more they stalled, Corvo thought then, the worse it was going to be when they finally got around to it.

“I’m…” Billie looked at each of them and cleared her throat, turning slowly towards the hallway, “gonna go get some more Addermires.”

*

“Just remember what you did last time and do that,” Corvo said, quietly, as if to not spook the focus in the air or tear whatever string of concentration their meeting stares were weaving in the space between. “Don’t do what you did the first time.”

Daud scoffed, though just as cautiously. “No shit.” And a few moments later, in a softer tone: “I’ll try.”

Corvo swallowed, and nodded.

“Just—” Daud worked his jaw. “Try to relax.”

“I am relaxed.”

“Then I guess relax more. It’s very difficult when you’re focused on it.”

“I can’t just… not be focused on it.”

“You’re putting up a barrier. It’s like that rat. You know it’s coming and you’re inadvertently preparing for it, and that’s blocking me out.”

“How can you tell? You haven’t started yet.”

“I am starting. I’m feeling out the approach.”

 _Oh._ Corvo shifted in his seat.

Daud scoffed softly. “Well now you’ve just tensed. Maybe we should go into the city, let you walk around for a bit and forget about this whole thing, and I’ll jump you when you’re at your most unassuming.”

Corvo choked on air. “Wow. Yes. A wonderful idea.”

“Nah, I’m serious. If you’re not expecting it it’ll be easier to sneak in.”

“Yeah, well, now you can be damn sure I’ll be expecting it any second. You aren’t exactly giving me any other choice.”

“Hrmph.”

Another long moment.

“Maybe if we still headed out to Batista tomorrow,” Daud said quietly. “And you got caught up in the work. You wouldn’t be thinking about this.”

“No.”

“I’m giving you options here.”

“And I’m refusing. No, Daud, we need to be in our top shapes out there. Even if it works, there could be side effects. It could go wrong somehow. No.”

Daud sighed. “Well then we’re stuck right here.”

Corvo took a deep breath and then slowly drew it out. He closed his eyes. Paid attention to the state of his eyelids and consciously relaxed them to the full extent.

Then he opened his eyes. Blinked a couple of times.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll try to let you in.”

“Good. Just relax. Trust me.”

That was a tad difficult, though Corvo didn’t let himself resort to caustic comments on the matter.

He once again closed his eyes, once again opened them, took another deep breath and, paying close attention to bursts of tension in his body, tried to open his mind.

He couldn’t help but think back to the people whose skin he’d worn over the years, the wide range of reactions he’d seen in those sensitive enough to recognize a foreign presence in their mind. In some, there’d been curiosity, amusement. In others, a kind much more common—helplessness, horror, the complete inability to force the intrusion back out or otherwise call for help or do anything at all.

Years ago, the day he saw how truly terrifying possession was, he walked a man to his death.

Any kind of loss of control over one’s own body was a frightening concept in itself. _Absolute_ loss of control…

There was no point in thinking into this, he thought, he was only making it worse for himself. Daud wouldn’t do anything. He’d slip right in and carefully, patiently, find a way to push Corvo out. Daud was skilled. Experienced. He’d do this right, without hurting either of them.

This would work.

He thought, then, if Daud was going to give notice or warning. If he was going to drink more of the Addermire that Billie’d brought before leaving them alone, give any indication of being about to—

Corvo gasped as something flooded into him and spread with buzzing and tingling over his entire being, reaching every fiber of every muscle—and when he blinked, Daud was gone.

He felt—something. Something stirring deep in the back of his skull, a dull pressure, an itch he couldn’t possibly scratch. For now, it sat still and so did he, still as death, not moving even a finger.

When he tried—when he thought to try—he couldn’t. He simply sat and he breathed, but could distinctly feel that he was no longer the one doing the breathing.

 _Daud,_ he thought for lack of words or gestures or any other means of communication, wondering if he could hear his thoughts. At least he still had that. _I feel you. Can you move?_

He had no way of knowing whether Daud heard him or if the following movement of his hand was entirely coincidental, but with it, the stirring in his head jerked, grew into pressure and pulling all at once.

He couldn’t wince, all he could do was wait. He thought, maybe this was something like what a live marionette would feel.

A few moments, and his hand moved again, then another, then his whole body came alive as, Corvo supposed, Daud got accustomed to controlling his own physical self again.

He stood up. He rolled his neck. He stepped away from the table and stretched his hands. 

He then reached out towards one of the empty vials on the table, and, easy as second nature, the thing flew right into his Marked hand.

 _Ah,_ Corvo thought as assurance flooded his senses. _So far so good._

Daud shared in the sentiment, it seemed. He took a chestful of air and loosed a sigh of delight, and tossed the vial in his hand.

“Well, Corvo,” he said, and Corvo felt him grinning. “I’m thinking you’ve overstayed your welcome.”

 _Oh,_ Corvo thought as the pressure in his head grew, _you have no idea._

Suddenly, he was being—pushed. Pressed, squished, pinched from all sides at once, and something like this would have manifested in a skull-splitting headache had he been occupying his own body. He wanted to help, he wanted to move and pull himself in whatever direction the escape was, and yet he was forced to wait and simply hope for the best.

The pressure spread, flowed from the head and down into the neck, the shoulders. Daud was undoubtedly feeling it himself now; he began flexing his fingers and clenching his fists, gritting his teeth, taking deeper breaths.

He braced his arms on the edge of the table, stabilizing himself amidst the strain of the entirety of his body and mind as he worked to force Corvo out.

“Alright, you little shit,” he gritted out, and heaved a breath as another shove slammed Corvo against a wall of an invisible box. “You’re gonna get out, and you’re gonna stay out, you hear me?”

 _Please,_ Corvo could only uselessly think, _that’s all I fucking want._

Another pull. Another _push._ Another undecided tug in one way or another. “I said—” Daud squeezed his eyes shut, and rolled his neck with a hiss, “it’s time—” he pressed a hand to his temple, pushed against it, and it echoed with a ripple inside his head, “for you—” he did it again and an invisible force jerked Corvo in an unknowable direction with considerable progress, “to _fucking go.”_

Corvo lurched. 

The entirety of him slid down into quicksand, a funnel, and then he slipped and kept slipping and slipping until—

The Void threw him out onto the floor of the briefing room and he fell to his knees and coughed and dry-heaved as his stomach tried its absolute best to fold in on itself.

He wasn’t the only one on the verge of collapsing—Daud joined him in the cacophony of attempts to hold down bile, barely holding himself up against the table as he tried to regain his breathing.

Only when Corvo got ahold of his own did he get the opportunity to process the fact that this was Daud in his own usual flesh.

And that before him were his very own hands.

And on his face was his very own beard.

 _“Fuck,”_ he breathed with his very own breath, and broke into a fit of relieved laughter.

*

Everyone could see that Sokolov was just a tad disappointed, but least the man had the decency to not actually say anything about it.

Billie made it perfectly clear that she would now be paranoid and skeptical of who was who for at least a week, and that it was entirely their fault.

The Outsider, at least, was pleased—maddening, for sure, but now Corvo wasn’t sure if he should be worried.

“My dear Corvo,” the god smiled at him, “you should know by now, that with me, you have nothing to worry about.”

Corvo, frankly, did not know whether to laugh or cry.

**Author's Note:**

> no real rats were harmed in the making of this text


End file.
